The Former Traveling Spotlight

The tales of a "30" something gay former stand-up comic living in NYC who is searching for his soul mate or soul...which ever comes first.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Sins

I've said this before, but I think life insurance is one of the biggest rip off scams of the century. Pay so much money a year and when you die...somebody else hits the lottery. Of course, if it's term life insurance, your relatives don't make out unless you die before a certain age. I wonder if medically assisted suicide is an exclusion?

Of course, the reason I'm bringing this up is kind of stupid. See...when i was less than a year old, my father opened up a whole life insurace policy in my name. He paid it yearly as was required, and continued to pay it while I was growing up. When I moved away at the age of 17, he continued the policy, until he died. My grandmother then continued to pay the policy bill. Until 4 years ago, when she happened to notice that the beneficiary on this policy was my dead father, and lets face it...hell doesn't have a lot of use for money.

So my grandmother tried to change the beneficiary into her name, but the company wouldn't do it, as now that I was over the age of 18 (I'll be 24 next year), only I could change the policy beneficiary. My grandmother just handed me a piece of paper and said "sign this", which I refused to do until I saw what it was I was signing. Thus, how I ended up paying this annual bill.

Wait...it gets better.

Normally, this bill is $119 annually, however interest rates have been ridiculously low, and therefore, my bill is higher. Aparently, when I was 18, my father took out a loan against the policy, with the intention that the interest being earned would be enough to pay the policy premimum and loan principle each year. This isn't the case right now, so I owe $400.

The sins of the father will be paid by the son.

If I cash in the policy, the cash value will not cover the entire cost of the loan, and I will then owe just over $3000. Well isn't that special! Thanks dad!

It figures that after 37 years, my dad can still find a way to piss me off!

Patrick - 11:03 AM -

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